Álvarez Bravo, Manuel, 1902-2002

LC control no.	n 79117871
Descriptive conventions	rda
Personal name heading	Álvarez Bravo, Manuel, 1902-2002 *Browse this term in* LC Authorities or the LC Catalog
Variant(s)	Bravo, Manuel Álvarez, 1902-2002 Álvarez Bravo, M. (Manuel), 1902-2002
See also	Husband of: Álvarez Bravo, Lola, 1907-1993 *Browse this term in* LC Authorities
Other standard no.	0000000109172819 76372784
Biography/History note	Manuel Álvarez Bravo, one of the founders of modern photography, is considered the greatest representative of Latin American photography in the 20th century. His work extends from the late 1920s to the 1990s. He was born in downtown Mexico City on February 4, 1902. He interrupted his studies at the age of twelve when his father died and began to work to help the family economy, in a textile factory and later at the Tesorería General de la Nación. His grandfather, a painter, and his father, a teacher, were both fond of photography. The early discovery of the possibilities of the camera will make him explore in self-taught all photographic procedures, as well as graphic techniques. At the beginning he approaches pictorialism, influenced by his painting studies at the Academia de San Carlos. He then explores modern aesthetics, with the discovery of cubism and the possibilities of abstraction. In 1930 he starts in documentary photography: Tina Modotti, when deported from Mexico, leaves him her work in the magazine Mexican Folkways. He worked for the muralist painters Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Alvarez Bravo is an emblematic figure of the period after the Mexican Revolution known as the Mexican Renaissance. It was a period whose richness is due to the happy, although not always serene, coexistence of a desire for modernization and the search for an identity with its own roots, in which the Mexican renaissance was a period of great importance.
Birth date	1902-02-04
Death date	2002-10-19
Place of birth	Mexico City (Mexico)
Place of death	Mexico City (Mexico)
Field of activity	Photography, Artistic Documentary photography Cinematography
Affiliation	Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (Mexico) Museo de Arte Moderno (Mexico)
Profession or occupation	Photographers
Found in	Los tesoros del Museo nacional de México, 1943. Instante y revelación, 1982: t.p. (Manuel Alvarez Bravo) spine (M. Alvarez Bravo) Manuel Alvarez Bravo, c1997: p. 78 (Mexican photographer) N.Y. times, Oct. 21, 2002 (Manuel Alvarez Bravo; photographer; b. Mexico City, Feb. 4, 1902; d. Saturday [Oct. 19] at home in Mexico City, aged 100) Wikipedia, June 25, 2013 (Manuel Álvarez Bravo; born February 4, 1902 in Mexico City; died October 19, 2002 in Mexico City; Mexico's first principal artistic photographer and an important figure in 20th century Latin American photography. His career spanned from the late 1920s to the 1990s with it's artistic peak between the 1920s to the 1950s. His hallmark as a photographer was to capture images of the ordinary but in ironic or surrealistic ways. His early work was based on European influences, but he was soon influenced by the Mexican muralism movement and the general cultural and political push at the time to redefine Mexican identity. In 1973 he donated his personal collection of photographs and cameras to the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. An additional 400 photographs are purchased by the Mexican government for the Museo de Arte Moderno. Álvarez Bravo was married to well-know photographers Lola Alvarez Bravo and Colette Alvarez-Urbajte and to the Latin American scholar Doris Heyden) Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Sept. 18, 2014 biography (Manuel Álvarez Bravo; one of the founders of modern photography, he is considered the main representative of Latin American photography in the 20th century. He had his initiation into documentary photography in 1930: when Tina Modotti left him her job at the magazine Mexican Folkways. He also worked for the muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Between 1943 and 1959, he worked in the film industry doing still shots, which inspired him to realize some of his own experiments with cinema, etc.) <http://www.manuelalvarezbravo.org/> Milenios de México, 1999: page 140-141 (Born Mexico City (1902). He started as a photographer around 1922. He was friends with Edward Weston and Tina Modotti. In 1938 André Breton organized an exhibition of his work in Paris.)